Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Palms Thai Restaurant

Last Friday we went to the Palms Thai Restaurant in Hollywood for ANOTHER Larry B-Day dinner! This is the Palms' new location. We loved the old restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. at Oxford Street in a crowded Thai mini-mall, but this new building at Hollywood and Bronson is spectacular! It's a huge building that houses the restaurant, a fancy looking nail salon and upstairs, a storage facility. There's reasonable valet parking in the back if you can't find street parking. The building is huge, the neon signs are great, the food is faboo and the place is hoppin'!

Thai Elvis at The Palms

Of course, besides the excellent food, the main attraction here is Thai Elvis. Kavee Thongprecha, also known as T.Elvis, actually has a fairly good voice. He uses a pre-recorded backing track of Elvis' songs. As mentioned, the restaurant is huge, lots of hard surfaces....bamboo, so the sound echos quite a bit. If you have rock 'n roll ears like I do (hearing loss created by standing in front of speakers in rock clubs during the 70's and 80's), you won't be able to hear your friends speaking while Thai Elvis is singing. But, that's OK. It's a wonderful experience to hum along to the songs and happily munch on the delicious food.

I researched preferred menu items on the L.A. Chowhound message board before we went to the Palms. We ordered many suggested dishes: Pineapple Fried Rice with Shrimp, Pork & Baby Chinese Broccoli, Fried Whitefish with Mango Sauce and the Thai Salad with Peanut Dressing. Everything was incredibly good. The prices are very reasonable too. Definitely check out their websitefor other innovative menu items.

Because we were there on a Friday night, we detected many groups of pre-club goers chowing down before they hit the Boulevard. It was really festive and fun. There's this huge aquarium toward the bar area, lots of interesting Thai carvings, headresses and sculpture displayed too. It's kind of Vegas and I love it!We walked outside after dinner and saw that the storage portion of the building has this really good neon sign of a guy moving boxes. We love neon. Who knows? I may even drive all the way over to Hollywood just to get my manicure and pedicure at the salon!